Blogs change campaigns

| Monday, March 07, 2005

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Editor's note: This is the second of a two-part series examining the impact of politically inspired Internet sites on the 2004 Senate campaign between Tom Daschle and John Thune. Sunday's story examined the relationship between controversial conservative reporter Jeff Gannon and the Thune campaign.

By Kevin Woster, Journal Staff Writer

Sioux Falls lawyer Todd Epp admits that he didn't get much legal work done last week.

He was too busy fighting the battle of the blogs.

Epp, a former newsman who once covered the state Capitol for South Dakota Public Broadcasting, is now a lawyer by training and a liberal-leaning blog watchdog, he says, by necessity.

Working with donations from like-minded people, Epp has started Thune Watch — a computer Web log, or blog, that will examine the votes, statements and general performance of freshman Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., in the coming years. He also intends to watch other Republican politicians, including Gov. Mike Rounds.

Perhaps more importantly, Epp has become yet another opinionated traveler through the vast skies of computer discourse affectionately known, among bloggers, as the blogosphere.

The political blogosphere in South Dakota during the 2004 U.S. Senate race between Thune and incumbent Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle was dominated by conservative thought. Some Daschle fans believe that two highly political blogs — South Dakota Politics and Thune v. Daschle — and their intense, one-sided scrutiny of Daschle and his record helped Thune defeat Daschle in the November election.

Daschle started his own blog of sorts during the campaign, but it didn't have the edge or impact of the more spirited conservative blogs. In the end, Thune supporters clearly won the battle of the blogosphere — this time.

Now Democrats, including Epp, are working to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Epp and other "progressive" bloggers say that it is only fair for the spotlight to shine on Thune and other Republicans at least as intensely as it did on Daschle.

"I'm trying to keep an eye on John Thune and focus on things that are of interest or that I think need more investigation, or that I think are just plain silly," Epp said last week.

As for South Dakotans for Campaign Accountability, the association supporting the blog, Epp said it isn't a corporation, a nonprofit entity, a charitable group or a political action committee.

"It's just a group of people who said, ‘Hey, we've got to hold Sen. Thune's feet to the fire a little bit,'" Epp said. "I think the Democrats are pretty motivated."

"Motivated" might be an understated description of the energy that conservative bloggers Jon Lauck and Jason Van Beek brought to the Daschle-Thune campaign and to the scrutiny they gave to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and its lead political reporter, Dave Kranz.

Conservatives have long complained about a liberal bias in the news media and an adoring relationship they claim reporters had with Daschle. In South Dakota, much of that criticism was aimed at the Argus Leader. Years of unfocused complaints began to coalesce early in 2003 when Van Beek, then a second-year law student at University of South Dakota in Vermillion, used the newly created South Dakota Politics blog to take on Kranz and the Argus. Van Beek got support for his effort later that year from Jeff Gannon, a self-professed conservative with little journalism background, who was writing for Talon News — a Web site bankrolled by Texas Republicans.

Jeff Gannon is the pen name of James Guckert, a 47-year-old Pennsylvania native who has made his own headlines of late for questionable access to White House News news briefings and past connections to sexually suggestive gay Web sites.

When he wasn't digging around in Daschle's record, Gannon focused on the Argus Leader in general and Dave Kranz in particular. Gannon highlighted the college friendship between Kranz and Daschle, implying that it had affected Argus news coverage in later years. He also reported on memos from the 1970s indicating that Kranz had a helpful relationship with the campaign staff of former Democratic U.S. Sen. Jim Abourezk.

Kranz has admitted that some of Gannon's reporting was accurate but also said there were many inaccuracies and distortions.

The Argus scrutiny started by Van Beek intensified when Lauck started his own blog, Daschle v. Thune, early in 2004. Lauck is both a history professor at South Dakota State University in Brookings and a lawyer who worked for Republicans to investigate American Indian reservation voter issues during Thune's near-miss loss to Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson in 2002 — a loss that still simmers in the minds of some conservatives.

Lauck brought a sharply conservative philosophy to his blog. And it, too, examined the Daschle record and also looked hard at the Argus Leader — giving critics of the paper's coverage a venue that they never had before, Lauck said.

"What recourse did you have? You could write a letter to the editor, or you could call up and scream at the editor," he said. "And now, you could tell your side. It completely changes the dynamics of the campaign, and I think it caught the Daschle people off guard."

Epp sees nothing wrong with more scrutiny of traditional news outlets. Only last week, he used his blog to criticize South Dakota reporters for not covering the Gannon story, which had been reported on many liberal blogs and some mainstream media outlets.

Epp bolstered his criticism with a sort of ultimatum for the Argus and KELO-TV in Sioux Falls to cover the story — including the extent of Gannon's connection to the Thune campaign — by mid-week, or else. Although the intent of the "or else" was unclear, KELO ran a story Wednesday night. And Argus Leader Executive Editor Randell Beck ran a column on the issue Sunday.

Epp said it was friendly encouragement more than anything. And he rejected the charges of bias made against Kranz by Lauck and other conservative commentators.

"I think to criticize Dave Kranz for his connections to Tom Daschle 30 years ago is just crazy," Epp said. "Obviously, anything that Dave has written over the years has to stand and speak for itself. But anybody who knows anything about how newspapers work knows he probably had two, three or four editors looking at his stuff, asking questions to make sure it was accurate and unbiased. So I think the charge is groundless."

Not surprisingly, Beck believes the bloggers' examination of Kranz was overly personal and unfair and denies any bias in covering Daschle. He also rejects assertions that pressure from conservative blogs caused the Argus to change its coverage in 2004 in ways that might have helped Thune.

"I've asked myself that about a hundred times," Beck said. "We went into 2004 with a plan that we put together — specific people on specific beats. We didn't change those things as a result of the barrage on the blogs."

Beck also denies pulling Kranz off the Senate race because of the blog criticism. The plan all along, he said, was for Kranz to cover the U.S. House race but comment on the Senate race as he saw fit in his column.

But there were some effects, including taking extra care to make sure stories and headlines were accurate and fair, he said.

Lauck said that in itself was an admission that blogs had an impact on the Argus. He believes the Daschle team lost a sympathetic media ear when Kranz didn't cover the Senate race. And blogs brought out information on both the Argus and Daschle that unsettled the formerly comfortable Daschle staff, Lauck said.

"They were counting on fairly favorable treatment from the Argus, which they get or have gotten," Lauck said. "And suddenly, they were in a different environment, where people actually scrutinized what they said."

Daschle campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, now a private political consultant in Sioux Falls, said the blogs went far beyond scrutiny and into fact distortion. And he blames Gannon's involvement for much of that.

Working with Gannon and Talon News, the blogs hammered away at Daschle as if they were part of the Thune campaign team, Hildebrand said. And in fact, the Thune campaign paid Lauck $27,000 and Van Beek $8,000 for consulting work during the campaign. Thune campaign manager Dick Wadhams said the fees were for research work to help prepare Thune for debates against Daschle and had nothing directly to do with the blogs.

"Jon and Jason are both very good at that (research)," Wadhams said. "The blog thing was their own."

Wadhams said it was hard to estimate how many South Dakota voters read the blogs. And it was likely that the most regular readers had already made up their minds how they would vote, anyway, he said.

"I think they had an impact in terms of raising issues that were not getting coverage in the regular media. But who knows?" Wadhams said. "It's certainly a brand-new part of campaigns, in terms of communications that didn't exist before."

Hildebrand said anti-Daschle commentary on the blogs and their links to similar stories by Gannon could have easily confused readers, leading them to believe the reports were balanced news accounts. In fact, he said, they were essentially campaign propaganda.

Talk radio would pick up the information and use it, often referring to "Talon News" as if it were a legitimate news outlet, and some voters could have been fooled, he said.

"People didn't know what Talon News is. It's got a name with ‘news' in it, so other people would cite its stuff as fact, and it was clearly biased," Hildebrand said.

Lauck said neither he nor Van Beek, who joined Thune's staff full-time in January, ever tried to hide the fact that their blogs had a conservative slant. But he contends that the information was factual, as were Gannon's stories.

One of Gannon's investigative pieces, based on a Freedom of Information Act request, dealt with a small tax break Daschle and his wife, Linda, got on their $1.9 million District of Columbia home. Some state news outlets followed Gannon's reporting with their own. Lauck said blogs highlighted other key points in Daschle's records that traditional reporters failed to cover. It was the issues, not the blogs or Gannon, that captured the election for Thune, Lauck said.

"I can't believe they want to make a big deal out of this," Lauck said. "I mean, that vaunted Daschle machine done in by Gannon and a few blogs? Come on."

But it is clear blogs were a force in 2004 that will affect campaigns and candidates in the future, he said.

"Now you have blogs, and they can scrutinize your record and go into details," Lauck said. "Everything has changed."

On that, Lauck and Epp agree.

"With Sen. Thune's connections to the bloggers and possible connections to Jeff Gannon, he has changed the paradigm of the relationship among journalists, candidates, political operators and the public," Epp said. "I think at one level, it's brilliant. At another level, I think we need to be concerned about those lines being blurred."

As a career newsman, Beck is concerned about that very thing.

"I think the fundamental lesson for all of us is that the Internet bombards us with information. As more and more people get their news off the Internet, the issue of credibility becomes No. 1," Beck said. "Are they getting their news from journalists or from advocates of a certain viewpoint? Readers really have to pay attention and be a little skeptical."

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com